The experience of
Choir Direction: influence on technical and artistic options and approximation
to Musical Theatre
My experience in choir direction led me
to compose for vocal music and I even wrote some things for choir. But letÕs
say that I became more at ease with the writing of Cantata sobre o Vulco in 1995 when I
was invited to take part in a symposium of multimedia arts in the Azores. And
while I was there, I always worked steeped in the spirit of trying to learn the
most about the space where we were, in fact like everyone in the symposium. From the inner
point of view, the experience of the trip to Capelinhos and the walks I took
there, for example were a very powerful revelation and I realised that I would
have to write a piece for that place. So, I did an electronic piece based on
some domestic electronic arsenal that I had taken with me. During the day I
would walk around the island Òlike crazyÓ and at night I would work in my room
with this material. Concretely, I took the opportunity to record many things
and to manipulate these recordings, adding other things, etc.
Meanwhile I also made a proposition to
the local Conservatory for me to work with whoever they wantedÉ I was a little
bold in presenting myself, saying:, ÒI am doing this work, if anyone wants to
collaborate with me in any way and participate IÕd be all too pleasedÓ. At the time I was also very involved in
terms of research, from the vocal point of view, of other sonorities and other
techniques (I was working quite a lot in this area by myself) and I very much
wanted to try this with other people. I had already formed a group with Paulo
Brando, in which we were doing this type of research, not only of pieces from
the 20th century, which is something that few people were doing, but in terms
of language research and in terms of vocal technique.
By chance, I was lucky that the people
who wanted to work with me were essentially singers Ð besides the singers there
was only one flautist who was a flute teacher who was there. Every day I
dedicated an hour and a half to two hours working with them Ð they had never
worked with these new languages before.
It so happened that one of the people who
was there working temporarily with us was Lusa Costa Gomes. At the time she
asked if she could come and see what I was doing with these singers and one day
she appeared with a text and told me ÒDo what you want with this text, I wrote
it based on what I thought you were doingÓ. In fact I was very close to the
dates for presenting this work which had to be done at the end of the symposium
but I spoke with Lusa, who I didnÕt know very well and made a proposal: ÒLook,
I really like the text a lot, but, if I understand correctly, what I am doing
in terms of vocal work is the deconstruction of the text. So, what I am going
to do is to take your text and assassinate it. May I?Ó She agreed, that I could
do what I wanted Ð and basically thatÕs what we did Ð we took the text and set
about dismantling it, sonorising the text in a non-narrative way.
Meanwhile, one of the people from the
symposium had filmed this work Ð and it came about as simply as that Ð Lusa
Costa Gomes saw it and said: ÒGood, and how about now doing something that was
narrative, where the text had another type of language?Ó At that time I also
dared to say: ÒOk, then this time I also propose making something in which
voices have a predominant role, where all of the electronics disappears and
where we really have the live instruments in a very material way.Ó This may
also appear a little romanticised for some people, but in fact this physical
side, the aspect of having the musicians there, of creating a very close
relationship with the public was one thing that I was very interested in.
And in fact that was how Cantata was bornÉ it came
from my appropriating a text which actually had various versions. In fact, she
presented me with two or three models of completely different texts until I
seized on that text. So this was the first time that I attempted to hook all of
this together: the vocal research that I was doing until then, the choral work,
you may say, and the ease I was feeling with vocal writing or reading or
interpretation. And, in turn, I had the challenge of taking the instrumentation
and working on it with the same type of approach and freedom with which I
worked with electronics, but knowing that I was writing for musicians. Perhaps
also as the text itself is a tragedy (if thatÕs what you can call it) which for
me ended up by acting as a tragic comedy, in this process there was an
interpretation and a desire to work on this genre, to play a little with what a
Cantata is; Lusa Costa Gomes really wanted to do a Cantata and I ended
up by taking the model of the Baroque Cantata, which is recitative from the
formal point of view, which I related to a lot as an interpreter and basically
I tried to see what was possible in terms of our present day creative freedom.
Suddenly, I saw that I had come up
against another problem: ÒOk, but when then is this exactly to have live
musicians and specifically singers? What is this physical relationship with the
spectator, with the public and, of course, also between them? This is where I
began to become very interested in the Theatre. I mean, I began to do some
music work for theatre and a new and major interest was born Ð to understand
how a theatre play is put on and all the aspect of stage production; or how
does an actor put on and build a character. Basically, I began to relate it
with my world and with music. This being the case, it was no
coincidence that from then on it began to be more or less decisive for me to
always have a relationship with musical theatre, which implied resolving
something which was one of my problems: in fact, I always fled from singing and
piano recitals and poetry reading sessions because I didnÕt have the patience
(even though I am a great lover of poetry). In order for you to understand the
work which perhaps has been the most significant, in 1999 I ended up by doing Elegantssimo, which is
assumedly a recital of musical theatre. Elegantssimo sprang exactly
from this starting point: ÒHow is it possible for me to begin to like it?Ó
Another problem is linked to the fact of my wanting to understand how an actor
gets to a certain place and how does a musician get there and to understand,
finally, that they are almost truly antagonistic world, and to discover how I
could possibly bring them together.
Once again, I did it in a way which is
beginning to be quite recurrent in me and which is to introduce some humour in this
process. So, I have quite often put actors in a very musical role, in a
completely musical approach and, at the same time, giving singers a theatrical
approach, which is normally a problem. Or rather, the singers are technicians
from a vocal point of view and have a poor relationship with the stage, with
ÒliveÓ experience, and they need the security they get from the interpretation
of what is written and which tends to be repeated and the same as the previous
show. The actors, on the contrary, want the feeling of insecurity, they want
precisely for everything to happen in the moment. And basically, I have also
never completely abandoned improvisation. For me, improvisation was always a
driving force for starting to write. What I tried to do then was to make this
dialogue possible, taking surrealist poets and satirical poets who, in terms of
inspiration, have helped me a lot to put this all into order.